110125-stop-threatening-to-leave
Content ---- ---- Granted, it wouldn't stop 'all' of the 'i quit' threads, but there is no exit poll (when you cancel your sub) for why players are leaving, and it's vital to a company to know why so many of their customers are leaving. While the threads may annoy you, they are an important step in moving the game in the right direction. The good thing about those threads are, you don't actually have to click on them just because they are there, and thus, shouldn't annoy you at all. | |} ---- ---- No, positive attitudes will encourage them to keep doing what they were. The I'm leaving threads tell the devs why they are leaving since unlike most other MMOs that care why their customers don't want their product anymore have a questionnaire asking why you're going. If you don't like it don't go on the forums. | |} ---- I think they simply forgot to integrate a questionnaire, just like the "Show only online members"-button for the friends- and guidlist. We may see both getting added after they solve their current problems. Topic: As much as I hate most of those "I'M QUITTING"-threads, they are also in a way necessary, especially if there is no kind of other feedback option. Although a lot of those Quit-threads really lack any (qualitative) content. | |} ---- "Just my two cents"-cliche .... Sure they love the game.. hopefully.. but all in all, they are doing a job. The thing with a job is... you can do it either good or bad. You can do several things good and some things bad. "We are all humans"(-cliche). In addition, I feel the need to build up some pressure upon the Carbine to get things sorted a little quicker to just keep the enthusiastic players and get more. This is all legit. | |} ---- Hey you, I am an eleven year old girl and I haven't whined once, well not till now :unsure: | |} ---- ---- There's a checkbox for the "show offline" for guild and circles now. Idk about friendslist. | |} ---- ---- ---- You obviously have not read any I quit feedback, most of the ones I have read leave valid concerns in a constructive way. 90% of the issues I have read have nothing to do w/consuming content either, it's that the content not worth consuming. Leaving feedback for a product you have paid for and continue to pay is not entitlement or whining, it's a crappy outlook people have today w/the acceptance of mediocrity in customer service and our attitude of who cares compared over the last few decades. I can tell you I will get the customer service I expect from a business or retail, and trust me you will give me the best damn service too, and if not we have other avenues in this age of technology to share our concerns. Those avenues will not help your business grow either. Just this week I ask a worker in a grocery chain I shop at where I can find an item, her response was "I don't know sorry" and continued stocking shelves, my response was "stop what you're doing and find out than", w/disgruntle huff she went and found out. Such bs, who the hell do these people think they are, you're paid to provide service plain and simple just shut up and provide it, or not and I will make you earn that hourly wage you deserve. and now to the age of technology and automated responses, you can ignore or provide crappy services all you want, but expect those customers to give feedback on that product in these forums or other game sites. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Threatening to leave isn't voting with money. Actually leaving is. :P | |} ---- that's the point. | |} ---- ---- True - But you have to realise alot of new players interested in the game will be reading the forums for some feedback. If it's filled with these ridiculous threads - of course it's gonna scare new customers away. Which will only deepen the current problems | |} ---- I think it may be you who has not read many QQuit threads... maybe 1/10 is actually useful and constructive.. rest are trash. | |} ---- Finally a post from the Carbine marketing department! | |} ---- I understand the anger. It might not help much, but you're right. It does not help your argument to say you're leaving, or even threaten to leave. What does that prove? A point should stand on its own as a good idea. Some people forget that you don't have to have hurricane katrina to ask for better sanitation. People forget that the best way to get Carbine to listen is to have a good idea that will still be a good idea three years from now even if it does have millions of players. A good idea should be a good idea no matter the circumstances, and should be presented that way. Screaming that your hair is on fire doesn't convince people that the building should be brought up to the new millenium's plumbing code. | |} ---- See, how a customer behaves should have no impact on how you do your job. Even if they are being unreasonable, part of good customer service is knowing how to deal with every kind. And if we're perfectly honest, most of the people leaving feedback before quitting are voicing valid concerns, though they may sometimes be coloured by frustration. You can't possibly know how devs feel about this and what they do with it. It sure seems better that they get feedback than have people just leave without a word. Feedback is inherently helpful, just depends on how it's received and sorted out. Obvious trolls are usually quite obvious. The worst thing you can do to your customers is to dismiss them as being whiny crybabies. I sure hope Carbine are more professional than that. | |} ---- I assume the ridiculous threads you are referring to are those like this one. People are leaving for . People who might be interested in the game might also think are important and a deal breaker. Even if a former player never comes back, it is in the Devs best interest to fix so future players don't leave for . The sooner they fix , the better and the Devs can't understand if they don't hear about them. | |} ---- You can say whatever you want, I know that the woman that comes in with her hands on her hips and throws a fit isn't going to be the one that makes me go the extra mile. Customer service people aren't robots; they're people who like to be treated like they're doing a job to the best of their ability. Carbine can try to be as professional as they want, in the end they're people and they would rather listen to your suggestion if its couched in evidence, logic, and understanding rather than snide cynicism and haughty imperiousness. The former just doesn't get as many replies from other forum posters. | |} ---- ---- ---- It wouldn't hurt. Although, as much as I hate "I Quit" threads, I'm almost leery of having them taken out of the game. I mean, granted, they're often full of unhelpful vitriol, but somewhere, deep down, they do usually have some issue which is relevant to keeping current players enjoying the game. I mean, a LOT of people made quitting posts over RNG on items. No, the "quitting" posts aren't helpful, usually, but the fact does remain that it's something that could do with a new system. I mean, I know very few people who like the current system enough that they wouldn't want something to replace it that has them playing more continuous hours. It's good for everyone. Plus, never bad to know who to call to tell them if something is fixed. The silver lining to take from the threads is that almost all of them say they love everything about the game except one element that ruins it. Sounds trivial, almost histrionic, to quit over something like a week-or-two long attunement process, but it was pointing at something hidden behind the posts (that having people at different stages of attunement not being able to "help" each other until they were on the same stage is a PITA for a raid leader to organize). Once those things and other major systems overhauls are in, like the PVP fix on the PTR, Wildstar might get a lot of those people back. So there are better ways to provide feedback and they make the GD forums a pit of darkness for the most part, but it makes it a lot easier for us, the current players who aren't going anywhere, to spot issues that could use improvement even though they don't necessarily impinge on us. I mean, we all want more people playing the game. In the end, I guess I'm in agreement with the OP to an extent, but I'm hesitant, since I almost prefer to know what problems other people are experiencing rather than having them disappear down a hole I can't see them. | |} ---- ---- ---- If you only knew how very little it takes to flip that back completely - usually just some validation and a feeling that they're being heard is what makes most people drop the attitude and act like any other customer who feels appreciated. It's really not that hard to shut down a fit immediately and get the person to trust you. Like with all things in life, a little empathy and understanding goes a long way. The customer isn't there to make the employee feel good, it's the other way around, that's the whole concept of "customer service". I'm not saying anything about the quality of posts, how someone reads those is mostly subjective. Even the posts written in the most objective and rational manner rub some people the wrong way. All I'm saying is, feedback is better than no feedback, which is what I think this topic is about - the whole "stop posting you're quitting" thing. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- For people who's primary purpose is to max out and get to GA it's just in their way. Imagine if every time you went to the grocery store there was one intersection that would randomly make you go around the block once before letting you continue. Now imagine it doesn't do it just once, but ten times. Now imagine there's not just one intersection but twenty of them... | |} ---- Seeing the trees and missing the forest, my friend. Look at your own list: 1. not enough endgame content that my group can actually do. 2. not enough endgame content that my group can actually do. 3. endgame content that I can do is unrewarding and tedious. 4. content in general is unrewarding and tedious. 5. PvP fights between people with massively disparate gear 6. Reward system is unrewarding and tedious 7. The people I play with are gone. 8. The people I play with are gone. There's some very common recurring threads in the reasons why people leave. All you have to do is actually think when you look at the complaint: what is the core problem that this complaint is getting at? | |} ---- I think you pretty much sum up what is the core problem. Many of these Devs are aware of them. However they dont give that promising details on when will they able to rectify this. It may take weeks/months for them to address and by the time they fix them all, all people would prolly give up on this game already. They just way too slow from the look. | |} ---- You know, if I hadn't literally had people coming up to curse at me and use racial slurs at the top of their lungs because their goods weren't purchased from our store, and thus we couldn't return them for money, I'd agree. But there is a way to go about being a customer that helps you. And, having worked in retail for over a decade, I would never, ever walk into a store and act like some of these comments do. Criticize the game, that's fine; I've done that plenty. But there comes a point where you're shooting your own argument in the foot. If I walked into a store, called out everything I didn't think was being done correctly, no matter how unrealistic it is, complained that I wasn't allowed to entirely skip the line, stood at customer service, and proclaimed at the top of my lungs that I would never shop at the store again because nobody there knew what they were doing and they were out of this hot-ticket video game, I'd imagine that would reflect poorly on me, not the store. And why should they take me seriously? They may want my money, they may hope I come back in a better state of mind, but they're under absolutely no compunction to take my opinion and suggestions seriously. I would imagine they'd be even less inclined in that case. The only difference is that what generally stops people from doing that is some kind of sense of responsibility and dignity, something you don't have to necessarily worry about on an internet forum. I'm not about shutting down all criticism; I've distilled it into functional criticism plenty of times. But that's entirely because any kind of meaning in most of the posts is buried behind a wall of self-aggrandizing bile. And, yeah, if there was less of that and a bit more well-intentioned, well-thought, and well-meaning criticism, I wouldn't find it necessary to do. It's necessary to tease this stuff out, but I'm under no illusion that if I'd decided to scream my potential changes at Carbine, I'd very much expect to be taken less seriously. Why should they? There's enough well-written suggestion threads here on the forums that they don't need to read every angry diatribe to put together a list of things they want to improve. | |} ---- ^ | |} ---- It gets worse. Now imagine that there's other stores where you don't have to do this, with products that are not identical but similar enough that you were shopping at them before you came to this store. As for the OP, I believe many people have noted that if the game wants to stop cluttering up the forums with "I quit" threads, they could always include a survey with the 'unsubscribe' option that asks why the person is unsubscribing. As it is, this is the only way it's even possible for them to learn why people are leaving their game. Even then, they'll only learn from it if they don't just dismiss it as whining like you did. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- There are no glowy happy praise posts. The unfortunate fact is that everyone will come here when one thing breaks, but no one comes here to compliment them if almost everything works. All forum posts, at least in a place like GD, serve as is a place to see what the trending issue is. | |} ---- Agreed, people tend to express themselves more when they're unhappy. But here's the flip side, praise and appreciation, in the context of a business, is given with our money and participation. While forums will always be (probably) a mostly negative experience, I would say the fact that most of these threads are negative should tell carbine something. I remember back in the day of DAOC, even when the game was at the peak of its popularity and quality, there were always 50 percent of the posts that really were just complaints, raging, etc. | |} ---- You're presuming that the role of the customer in this is that they want to provide feedback so that the provider improves. If a customer does not plan to return, they are not obliged in any way to help the provider improve on their way out the door. Often, by the time a customer is willing to scream and shout in frustration, they no longer believe that the provider will take complaints seriously whether they're put in polite and respectful terms or not. They're just giving a very local and very emphatic bad review to everyone in hearing distance. It's up to the provider to decide whether to try to distill anything useful from the tantrum or not. Personally, I wouldn't bother if it was a very rare thing that someone left my store screaming in anger and my business was doing well overall. But if there were people doing it every day, multiple times a day, and even among the people who used the product there was general agreement that the product has some serious issues, I would not be nearly so dismissive. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether Carbine is in that first position or the second one. | |} ---- It seems about right for a launch. Hell, WoW's forums still look like this. Plenty of people are still venting at them for introducing mythic raiding, which seemed like a decent idea to me given how they run their content. Launches tend to be horrible. Not to say Carbine shouldn't listen to criticism, but the people who are staying but want something changed are the best people to address first, since they don't have to "come back". I mean, you have some people who were (I kid you not) lighting the forums up for the first few days because they thought leveling should be removed from the game. Getting to 50 was a "gate". I'm kind of glad they didn't hop to and remove the entire leveling process because that was a trendy thing to dislike. Therein lies the issue, and why I put that disclaimer in my post. The internet isn't like a store. People didn't learn to give constructive feedback on the internet, they learned that you get the most attention by shouting the loudest. Seriously, it's a byline in almost all of these that they "love" the game and "will come back if this one thing is changed". Which seems strange, since most of them are calling Carbine amateurs who didn't know what they were doing and are intentionally stealing people's money by tricking them into playing, etc. In this store, since nobody even has to talk to a human being like they would at a service desk or call line, people default to bitter vitriol. It's not just here, the hate expressed through anonymity and the death of dignity are well-documented parts of the internet. | |} ---- Bathory has a very slight point; but while it is a point; it is irrelevant to this discourse. People are responsible for their own actions; if customers chose to be douche canoes that is their choice; the onus is not on CS to make them not be dick-holes. And if you treat some one poorly, they aren't going to invest as much genuine time and energy to solving your problem. Now I actually don't think that's how these devs operate at all. Cougar is very staunch in that he is happy to take the heat from players; and that he keeps pushing things forward towards an improved playing experience. Make no mistake, the Devs don't HAVE to do anything to this game. They could let it run as is and tell people to get the Cupcake over it. But instead they are working 11-13 hour days all week to appease the player base. Most people who make snide comments / complain about W* have literally Zero clue about the actual work that needs to be done to change or fix even what they may feel are very 'simple' things. Most players can't even fathom the complexity of a game of close to 7 million lines of code written from scratch on an engine that was also written from scratch. While feedback is good; self-serving valediction is not. and the vast majority of 'I quit' threads are just epeen stroking valediction. I've literally seen 2 well constructed I quit threads in this forum... EVER. P.S. This game does not suffer from RNG; I can list at least a dozen MMO's with more RNG. It suffers from a player base that thinks they are getting Hard Mode WoW instead of Wildstar. | |} ---- No. | |} ---- ---- Maybe CARBINE should follow US on twitter. :D | |} ---- I hope they follow me on Facebook. I'm effuse with praise. That's how I get so many of my IRL family and friends to play! If only they RPed. | |} ---- ---- ---- Yes... Aion Tera Ultima RO FFXI DAoC EQ1 EQ2 AC L2 MO D3 The list goes on, but there's a dozen for ya | |} ---- Uh, No. This game definately suffers from RNG. Just because others are worse doesn't mean Carbine didn't take it too far. Yes to this No. Yes... |} No to this Yes to the previous No. | |} ---- Not even a little. Even with the RNG you can get a useable pre-raid set in a few weeks of running content. In most of the games I listed you couldn't do that in a month or two beacuse of their RNG. To be a problem (objectively) the RNG in W* would have to be so bad that it took months to aquire the gear / prerequisites for content (just like in many of the games I cited) however that isn't the case by far. W* has many systems to eliminate getting stuck because of RNG. The ONLY reason people cry about RNG is because the Min/Maxers hate the fact that perfectly useful gear can drop as either perfectly useful or BiS. They want it to drop as BiS every time instead of having the spread that currently exists. While JTal is making the runes less RNG, and depreciating main stats so others are competitive; he won't take out the RNG; because it is a good system that reduces the 'BiS or Bust' mentality. | |} ---- ----